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Acceptable Use Policy

Effective Date: September 13, 2026

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) describes permitted and prohibited uses of the websites, hosting services, servers, networks, software, systems, and other services provided by Calico Design LLC (“Calico Design,” “we,” “us,” or “our”).

This Acceptable Use Policy is incorporated into and forms part of the Calico Design Terms of Service.

By accessing or continuing to use Calico Design hosting or other services, you agree to comply with this Acceptable Use Policy.

This policy is intended to protect our Customers, infrastructure, service providers, networks, and the broader Internet community from illegal, abusive, disruptive, or harmful activity.

1. General Acceptable Use

Calico Design services may be used for legitimate websites, applications, business operations, and other lawful purposes consistent with the Customer’s applicable service plan.

Customers are responsible for all content, software, files, databases, applications, accounts, and activity associated with their hosting environment, including activity performed by employees, contractors, website administrators, plugins, scripts, automated systems, and other authorized users.

You agree to use Calico Design services responsibly and in a manner that does not interfere with the security, stability, performance, reputation, or operation of our infrastructure or the services provided to other Customers.

2. Illegal Activity

Calico Design services may not be used to conduct, promote, facilitate, or support activity that violates applicable local, state, federal, or international law.

Calico Design reserves the right to cooperate with valid legal requests, court orders, subpoenas, law enforcement investigations, and other lawful governmental processes as required by applicable law.

3. Malware and Malicious Activity

You may not knowingly use Calico Design services to create, host, distribute, execute, transmit, or facilitate malicious software or malicious activity.

Prohibited activity includes, but is not limited to:

  • Viruses;
  • Trojan horses;
  • Ransomware;
  • Spyware;
  • Malicious scripts;
  • Credential-stealing software;
  • Backdoors;
  • Botnets;
  • Cryptojacking or unauthorized cryptocurrency mining;
  • Malicious redirects;
  • Exploit kits;
  • Code intended to compromise other systems; and
  • Software intended to evade or disable security controls.

If malware or malicious activity is detected, Calico Design may take immediate action to protect the affected website, server, other Customers, or our infrastructure.

4. Phishing, Fraud, and Deceptive Activity

Calico Design services may not be used for phishing, impersonation, credential theft, financial fraud, identity theft, deceptive schemes, or other fraudulent activities.

You may not create or operate a website intended to mislead visitors into believing that it represents another individual, company, financial institution, government agency, organization, or service without authorization.

5. Unauthorized Access and Hacking

You may not use Calico Design services to attempt unauthorized access to websites, servers, networks, accounts, databases, devices, or other systems.

Prohibited activity includes:

  • Password cracking;
  • Credential stuffing;
  • Brute-force attacks;
  • Unauthorized vulnerability exploitation;
  • Port scanning intended to facilitate unauthorized access;
  • Bypassing authentication or access controls;
  • Intercepting information without authorization;
  • Attempting to compromise another website or account; and
  • Using Calico Design infrastructure as a platform for attacks against third parties.

6. Spam and Unsolicited Communications

Calico Design services may not be used to distribute unsolicited bulk communications, spam, fraudulent messages, or other abusive communications.

Customers are responsible for ensuring that email marketing, contact lists, newsletters, forms, automated notifications, and similar communications comply with applicable laws and the policies of any third-party email providers being used.

As described in our Terms of Service, Calico Design does not provide or operate Customer mailbox hosting. However, websites hosted by Calico Design may interact with third-party email delivery services.

If a hosted website generates spam or abusive email activity that threatens the reputation, deliverability, security, or operation of Calico Design infrastructure, we may restrict or disable the affected functionality.

7. Intellectual Property

You may not knowingly use Calico Design services to infringe the copyrights, trademarks, patents, trade secrets, or other intellectual property rights of another person or organization.

Customers are responsible for ensuring they have appropriate rights, licenses, permissions, or authorization for content they publish or distribute through their websites.

This includes responsibility for:

  • Images;
  • Videos;
  • Music;
  • Written content;
  • Logos;
  • Software;
  • Fonts;
  • Documents;
  • Downloads;
  • Product information; and
  • Other copyrighted or protected materials.

Calico Design may respond to valid intellectual property complaints and may remove, restrict, or disable access to material when required by law or reasonably necessary to protect our services.

8. Harmful or Abusive Content

Customers may not use Calico Design services to publish or distribute content when doing so is unlawful or creates a material security, legal, or operational risk to Calico Design or our infrastructure.

Calico Design does not generally monitor or editorially control Customer website content. Customers remain responsible for determining the legality and appropriateness of the content they publish.

9. Excessive Resource Usage

Hosting environments involve shared and finite technical resources.

Customers may not intentionally or repeatedly use hosting resources in a manner that materially degrades server performance, threatens infrastructure stability, or negatively affects other Customers.

Resource usage may include:

  • CPU usage;
  • Memory usage;
  • Disk storage;
  • Database resources;
  • Bandwidth;
  • File counts;
  • Processes;
  • Automated requests;
  • Cron jobs;
  • Backup activity;
  • Bot traffic; and
  • Other server resources.

A legitimate website experiencing unexpected growth or increased traffic is not automatically considered abusive.

When practical, Calico Design will work with the Customer to identify excessive resource usage and may recommend optimization, caching, security measures, an upgraded hosting plan, or migration to a more appropriate hosting environment.

Calico Design reserves the right to restrict activity immediately when necessary to prevent significant disruption or damage.

10. Automated Activity and Bots

Automated systems, crawlers, scripts, bots, scraping tools, and other automated activity must not be used in a manner that creates unreasonable load, circumvents security measures, violates applicable law, or materially interferes with our infrastructure.

Calico Design may block or restrict automated traffic when reasonably necessary to protect website or server performance.

11. Security Responsibilities

Customers are responsible for using reasonable security practices when accessing and managing their websites and accounts.

This includes:

  • Using strong passwords;
  • Protecting login credentials;
  • Limiting administrative access;
  • Using multi-factor authentication when available;
  • Maintaining secure devices;
  • Promptly removing access for former employees or contractors;
  • Keeping third-party services appropriately secured; and
  • Promptly notifying Calico Design of known or suspected compromises.

Customers should not knowingly install software, plugins, themes, scripts, or files obtained from untrusted or unauthorized sources.

12. Outdated or Vulnerable Software

Outdated, abandoned, compromised, or vulnerable software may create a security risk to the Customer’s website and the hosting environment.

Calico Design may update, disable, remove, quarantine, or otherwise restrict software when we reasonably believe it presents an immediate security or stability risk.

This may include vulnerable:

  • WordPress plugins;
  • WordPress themes;
  • Scripts;
  • Libraries;
  • Applications;
  • Files; or
  • Other software components.

When reasonably practical, Calico Design will notify the Customer of significant changes made to address a security issue.

13. Compromised Websites

If Calico Design determines or reasonably suspects that a Customer website has been compromised, we may take immediate protective measures.

These measures may include:

  • Blocking malicious traffic;
  • Disabling plugins or themes;
  • Changing or disabling credentials;
  • Restricting administrative access;
  • Quarantining suspicious files;
  • Temporarily disabling portions of a website;
  • Temporarily suspending the website;
  • Restoring available backup files; or
  • Taking other reasonable security measures.

Calico Design may take such action without prior notice when immediate action is reasonably necessary to protect the affected website, other Customers, our servers, our service providers, or third parties.

14. Customer-Installed Software

Customers with administrative access may install plugins, themes, scripts, applications, integrations, and other software.

Customer-installed software is used at the Customer’s own risk.

Calico Design does not guarantee that Customer-installed software will be secure, compatible, maintained, or suitable for the hosting environment.

If Customer-installed software creates a security, performance, or stability problem, Calico Design may require its removal or disable it when immediate action is necessary.

15. Reselling or Sharing Hosting Services

Customers may not resell, sublicense, redistribute, or provide Calico Design hosting resources to unrelated third parties unless Calico Design has expressly authorized such use.

Customers may not use a hosting account in a manner that materially differs from the intended purpose of the service plan.

16. Circumvention of Platform Restrictions

You may not attempt to bypass, disable, manipulate, or circumvent technical, security, billing, storage, resource, authentication, or other restrictions implemented by Calico Design or our service providers.

17. Investigating Suspected Violations

Calico Design reserves the right to investigate suspected violations of this Acceptable Use Policy.

When reasonably necessary, we may review relevant server logs, website files, processes, traffic information, security events, account activity, or other technical information associated with a suspected violation.

Any such investigation will be conducted for legitimate security, operational, legal, or abuse-prevention purposes and in accordance with applicable law.

18. Suspension or Restriction of Services

Calico Design may restrict, suspend, disable, or terminate all or part of a Customer’s services if we reasonably believe the Customer or a website is:

  • Violating this Acceptable Use Policy;
  • Violating the Calico Design Terms of Service;
  • Creating an immediate security threat;
  • Causing significant infrastructure problems;
  • Engaging in illegal activity;
  • Facilitating fraud or abuse;
  • Causing harm to other Customers or third parties; or
  • Creating a substantial risk to Calico Design or its service providers.

When practical and appropriate, Calico Design will attempt to notify the Customer and provide an opportunity to resolve the issue.

Calico Design is not required to provide advance notice when immediate action is reasonably necessary to prevent security threats, infrastructure damage, illegal activity, fraud, abuse, or harm to other parties.

19. Costs Associated With Abuse or Remediation

If a violation of this policy results in significant remediation, malware cleanup, investigation, restoration, technical support, third-party charges, or other work beyond the Customer’s normal service plan, Calico Design may charge reasonable additional fees for that work.

Whenever practical, such charges will be communicated to the Customer before non-emergency work is performed.

20. Reporting Abuse

If you believe a website hosted by Calico Design is being used for illegal, fraudulent, abusive, malicious, or infringing activity, please contact Calico Design through the contact information available on our website.

Reports should include sufficient information for us to identify and investigate the issue.

21. No Obligation to Monitor All Customer Content

Calico Design is a hosting and technology service provider and does not undertake a general obligation to proactively monitor all content, files, communications, or activities of every Customer.

Our ability to investigate or respond to abuse does not create an obligation to continuously monitor Customer websites or guarantee that prohibited activity will be detected.

22. Enforcement

Calico Design will determine appropriate enforcement measures based on the nature, severity, duration, and potential impact of a violation.

Depending on the circumstances, enforcement may include:

  • A warning;
  • A request for corrective action;
  • Removal or disabling of specific software;
  • Traffic restrictions;
  • Temporary suspension;
  • Permanent termination;
  • Additional remediation charges;
  • Reporting activity when required by law; or
  • Other reasonable measures necessary to protect our services.

Nothing in this policy requires Calico Design to use progressively increasing enforcement measures before suspending or terminating services when immediate action is appropriate.

23. Changes to This Acceptable Use Policy

Calico Design may update this Acceptable Use Policy as our services, infrastructure, security requirements, technology, legal obligations, or business practices change.

The effective date at the top of this page identifies the current version.

Continued use of Calico Design services after an updated Acceptable Use Policy becomes effective constitutes acceptance of the updated policy to the extent permitted by applicable law.

24. Relationship to the Terms of Service

This Acceptable Use Policy is incorporated into the Calico Design Terms of Service.

If a violation of this Acceptable Use Policy also constitutes a violation of the Terms of Service, Calico Design may exercise any rights or remedies available under either document.

25. Contact Information

Questions regarding this Acceptable Use Policy may be directed to:

Calico Design LLC
St. Petersburg, Florida, United States
CalicoDesignStudio.com

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